


The Watcher

by TheMourningMadam



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 07:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18149114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMourningMadam/pseuds/TheMourningMadam
Summary: Theodore Nott grows steadily more obsessed with Luna Lovegood until the unthinkable happens and he captures her. Forever.





	The Watcher

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [DBQ2019Round1](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DBQ2019Round1) collection. 



He’d always been overlooked, never quite fitting in with anyone in particular. Malfoy was the star of Slytherin House—obscenely affluent, with the brains to match, a band of cronies and droves simpering witches falling at his feet. Blaise had the looks and the smooth tongue, a posse of his own blathering whores trotting behind him. Crabbe and Goyle had each other— _ And Millie _ , he thought wickedly, even as he shuddered at the thought of  _ that _ trio. 

 

While he would follow after them on occasion, a strange outsider even with lifelong friends, the fact remained that Theodore Nott was a  _ loner _ . Average looks, little wealth, mediocre smarts. There had always been a disdain deep within him, an aching jealousy for everything he could never have. He had very little to offer, but there was something— _ someone _ —he wanted more than anything.

 

His heart resonated with Luna Lovegood. She remained alone, cast out and bullied by her own House. He watched her often enough to see that she was every bit the loner he was. The difference?  _ It didn’t bother her _ . No. Luna was unapologetically eccentric and lived her life to the beat of a melody only she could hear. 

 

Observing her had become an obsession of his. Theo didn’t know  _ when _ exactly it had begun. In second year, when he watched her enter the Great Hall, her large cobalt eyes scanning the magical ceiling with all of the awe of a first year? By the carriages in third year, when he saw her petting and cooing at the decrepit horses he thought only he could see? In fourth year, when he had skipped the Yule Ball in favor of watching her dance along the Black Lake? Or fifth year, when he had used the guise of the Inquisitorial Squad to follow her about the castle? Perhaps in sixth year, when he took to watching her in the library, if for no other reason than to escape Malfoy’s sullen wrath. Upon her return from Malfoy Manor in seventh year, when he had trained his wand on her under the guidance of the Carrows, her screams making him sickeningly aroused? 

 

Fuck— he’d watched her so long now that the years ran together, a blur of blonde hair and radish earrings and butterbeer corks. He followed her between classes, mesmerized by the way she always seemed to float, rather than walk. She would twirl on occasion, a shaft of sunlight catching her hair in a halo.

 

The son of a Death Eater, his entire life had been steeped in such darkness that her playful delight was the only thing to bring him an ounce of happiness anymore. The War was over, her father’s imprisonment fresh. And yet, she skipped toward the greenhouses to Herbology or read books about creatures upside down at the Ravenclaw table.

 

Theo sat at the Slytherin table, his seat at the very end affording him a direct line of vision to his witch. She was twirling her wand between her fingers, the end sparking purple as it wove its way across her hand. A spoon levitated and she took the porridge from it, her lips moving as though she were thanking the eating utensil between bites. In her hand, a jar containing some strange critter or another, he was certain. 

 

So often, his gaze must have penetrated through her calm, because she caught him staring a few times a week. This morning was no different. Stirring the sludge around in his bowl, he stared at her with his head tilted to the side. As he wondered what it would feel like to brush his own fingers through the silken length of her hair, Luna looked up. A smile curved on her lips, a forgiveness he should never have been afforded. His hips shifted on the bench as the memory of her writhing beneath him, wailing his name as a fresh  _ Crucio  _ surged through her, made his trousers tent uncomfortably. 

 

One corner of his mouth turned up in response before Blaise nudged him forcefully. “Loony is smiling at you again, mate.”

 

His teeth gnashed and ground painfully at the intrusion into the moment. The others spoke so rarely to him— the outcast, the  _ afterthought _ — so to have Zabini steal such a paramount experience from him displeased him greatly.  _ I’ll have to poison his mouth rinse.  _ Theo gave a single nod and mumbled, “She’s fucking barmy.”

 

_ Barmy?  _ Beautiful. She held such a charismatic glory, one unknown to any of the slags in Slytherin. His sullen attitude appeared to have turned Blaise off as he turned to speak with Draco about some Quidditch move or another. When Theo looked up again, Lovegood was rising from the table, tapping the glass of her jar as she stared at whatever was housed within. Her eyes slid to him once more and she gave him another smile before turning on her heel. 

 

The other snakes ignored him as he, too, stood and retrieved his bag. Students were milling about, weaving and bobbing between him and Luna, cluttering his clear path to her. She had a free period before Transfiguration and it was the first sunny day in a week— he knew exactly where to find her. 

 

When he finally emerged from the ornate doors and out into the open air, her head was a white spot a few hundred paces ahead. She would be headed toward the Black Lake, a favorite haunt of hers during free periods when the weather was warm. Theo glanced around, confirming that no one else had yet followed them before he trekked behind her at a slow pace. 

 

When she neared the lake’s edge, Theo watched as she lowered onto her belly, her hand brushing along the water’s surface. The way her hand swept over the shoreline, sending ripples that glittered like diamonds, he wanted to feel her hands caress him in the same way. To ignite the hundreds of embers that glittered through his veins at the very thought of her touch. 

 

“Hello, Theodore,” her airy voice broke through his train of highly inappropriate thoughts. 

 

He stopped walking, admonishing himself for not silencing his footfalls. Adjusting the bag’s strap on his shoulder awkwardly, he said nothing. Luna looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a wholly innocent look. “I found a water sprite clinging to my shower head this morning. I’ve come to return him home— care to join me?”

 

Lovegood. Always extending the olive branch into the face of those undeserving. “A water sprite?” he muttered, frowning in her direction.

 

She turned over and lay on her back, her hair dipping into the water’s edge. The jar was open in her hands and within, a tiny water fairy fluttered within. “I think he’s been bullied by the others in the ravines. I thought maybe he would enjoy it more in the Lake.”

 

He scoffed.  _ Taking on a bullied fairy _ . Always putting the love and comfort of others first. Fuck, her bleeding heart really did him in. His feet carried him and he sat alongside where she flipped back onto her stomach. “Are there other schools of sprites in here?” he questioned, looking at the back of her head at the strand of spun gold that sparkled there. 

 

“I  believe so. I used my underwater periscope to search and I saw a glimmering patch fluttering near the center,” she replied, putting her fingers into the jar and inviting the creature into her hand. 

 

Her robes were off— as they so often were when she came to sit alongside the water and read or dip her feet in. Her shirt was loose without a tie, a small patch of freckles on the back of her neck visible as her hair swept to the side. Without thinking, his hand outstretched and his finger grazed along her skin. Luna’s head whipped toward him and a wrinkle of concern gracing her brow. Theo decided he hated that look of worry and apprehension on her. 

 

“Why do you keep following me, Theodore?” she questioned, making a movement like she wanted to sit up.

 

His hand slid from her neck and gripped into her hair, holding her down. This was all wrong— this isn’t how he always imagined threading his fingers into her hair. Her hair knotted around his fist, he didn’t move. Her face turned toward him and her eyes—always large and inquisitive—were asking all of the wrong questions. “You’re hurting me,” she told him, trying to pull away though he easily overpowered her. 

 

“This wasn’t how I wanted this to go,” he growled, indignation rising in his chest at how terribly this first real conversation was transpiring. 

 

With a yank at her hair, Theo raised her onto her hands and knees, her fingers digging into the mud of the bank as her wand toppled from over her ear and bounced into the lake. “Please,” she cried, and the noise was unlike any noise he had ever heard her make before. “Let me go. We can talk about everything that happened—there’s a coddyclaw nest I wanted to visit—”

 

Fear glistened in her eyes and her lips curved into a frown. Anger surged in him, ice sliding through his veins. She was ruining everything. Her incessant need to speak.  _ To reassure.  _ Theo pulled her face against his, his lips pressing harshly into hers. When she refused to move her lips, he bit down forcefully. Her lips parted with a tiny yelp and his tongue licked along the blood he had drawn before delving into her mouth. 

 

Her hands clawed at his robes as she tried to push him away. The fight she was putting up only made him harder, her sounds of fear and trepidation fueling him. Luna managed to break her mouth away from him and she shoved him as hard as she could, a screech bubbling up from her throat. 

 

Theo lunged at her again, clapping a hand over her mouth as she fell back into the mud and landed on her side. “Quiet! Shut up or someone will hear you!” he hissed, his eyes scanning the perimeter to ensure they still hadn’t been followed. 

 

Another wail rang through the air and Theo struggled against her to push her head down into the water. Anything to quiet her screams. She was so much prettier when she wasn’t fighting him. When warmth and happiness radiated from her. Luna attempted to lift her head out of the water, coughing and sputtering as she choked. The gurgling and hacking raised the hackles along the back of his neck and arms, panic overtaking him at the thought that he would be caught.

 

Her head went under the surface once more, one of his hands wrapped around her throat to stave the airflow into her windpipe as his other hand pressed her nose and mouth toward the water. Beneath his weight, she struggled. Her legs kicked as her petite frame flopped under him. Her hands clawed at his wrists, at the mud around her, at the leg of his trousers. 

 

It felt like an eternity that they struggled, though it couldn’t have been much longer than a minute before she finally stilled. Luna’s body went limp as the water rippled around them. Drawing in ragged breaths, Theo leaned back on his haunches over her legs. His eyes glazed over as he looked down at her, his beautiful little imp. Once carefree and joyous, she was still and her eyes were bloodshot and unseeing.

 

Theo looked out over the water, no longer rippling but still as glass, smooth as the surface of a mirror. As he watched, the onyx surface lightened, reflecting the scene around him. The twisted, knotty okay branches from the tree behind him appeared, framing his own crazed face. From the water’s depths, Luna’s face shined. She offered him a smile and a wave before she turned to climb the tree behind him. 

 

His head whipped around and he looked around himself, searching for her. Her body was firmly planted underneath his waist. Pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes, he tried to will the hallucinations to end. 

 

When he reopened his eyes, there she was, hanging from the branch behind him and laughing gleefully as her arms reached down to brush the grass. His own face was looking back at him, and he blinked at his reflection. A bird flew overhead in the reflection and he glanced up, finding the crow circling around him.

 

Only she had changed.

* * *

 

For being the son of a Death Eater, Theo had seen very few people die. When he was six, his mother lay in her deathbed. His father commanded the House Elves to cover the mirrors in the house with black cloths, lest her soul get trapped in the other realm when she drew her last breath. 

 

That moment of his life had plagued Theo more than anything else— he could clearly hear his mother’s weakened whispers of love and pride in him, smell the sharp scent of the salve the Healers had slathered all over her body, feel the bony edges of her wrists in his hands. The dimness of her bedchamber made darker by the lack of reflections from the surrounding covered mirrors.  _ “We wouldn’t want her trapped between worlds, Teddy,”  _ his father had told him.

 

The surface of the lake had acted as a looking glass, capturing her soul, imprisoning her between the world of the living and the veil. A monumental mistake on his part. Mistake?  _ Or blessing?  _

 

He had staged her death, made it appear as though she had been grabbed by the Giant Squid. Her photograph smiled at him from every wall in the castle, huge posters in memoriam. No one suspected a thing, even as Theo slipped down to the water’s surface to see her each day. He’d never heard anyone mention seeing her at the Black Lake and he wondered if he was given this gift simply because of his connection to her death. 

 

Theo walked along the lakeshore, all the while watching as Luna lifted her hand and allowed a butterfly to rest on her fingertip. He looked to the butterfly, hovering strangely in midair and lifted his own hand, wishing he could lace his fingers with hers. Merlin, how he missed seeing her, hearing her demure voice in Herbology. 

 

She’d forced him to end it all, but for that, he held no hatred. He forgave her, just as she had forgiven him. 

 

Now he spent his days alongside the lake, watching her as she pranced and played in the water’s surface. A girl of seventeen forevermore. Her eyes were wide and full of that magnanimous innocence once more, her smile the same secret she had always shared with only him. Some days she wore a crown of daisies, others her fingers twisted a braid down her back. His own fingers twitched at his sides, longing to run through her golden locks.  _ No.  _ That line of thinking wouldn’t do. 

 

After so many years of watching her, waiting to finally be noticed, he had everything he wanted. Luna Lovegood was finally his. 

 

Forever.

  
  
  
  



End file.
